The Movie Buffs Who Track Box-Office Grosses as if They Actually Work in Hollywood

Abdi Bootaan is not a box-office analyst. 

But the Plymouth, Minn., high-school senior spends his spare time making spreadsheets of his box-office predictions for big movie releases and revising those predictions based on advance ticket sales. His prediction for “Zootopia 2” was close to the roughly $1.9 billion the movie actually made globally, but he overestimated “Wicked: For Good,” he said.